


if you're a stranger to your soul

by lostlenore



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Anastasia Fusion, Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Alternate Universe - Royalty, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-10-28 22:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10840881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/pseuds/lostlenore
Summary: There's a rumor in St. Petersburg that Prince Yuri Nikolayevich Pilsetsky survived the fires.





	if you're a stranger to your soul

**Author's Note:**

> "The truth is this: my love for you is the only empire I will ever build. When it falls, as all empires do, my career in empire building will be over."  
> Mindy Nettifee, _“This Is The Nonsense Of Love”_

 

Before anyone in the loft over the theatre was awake, before the sun was fully risen, and before the remnants of his dreams escaped him, Evgeni grabbed his skates and headed across the street to the pond.

 Dreams of fire weren’t unusual in St. Petersburg--the riots were only seven years behind them, and Evgeni was one of the lucky ones. People like Mila had nightmares, memories of lost family that haunted her. Evgeni was a blank slate. The fragments that came to him in dreams were small things: a square of light, a warm hand in his, a wall of fire. Only the St. Mark’s pendant had come with him from his previous life, hidden under his clothing on chain, and warmed by the heat of his skin. Evgeni examined it often, hoping for some clue to reveal itself but the front was taken up by St. Mark’s winged lion, and the back had only the maker’s stamp and the address of the shop: Place Vendôme, Paris.

Skating was the only thing that felt natural. One blade over the other, Evgeni skated endless figure-eights across the pond, turning over the puzzle-pieces of the dream in his mind. By mid-morning he’d acquired something of a crowd, and he stopped for breath under the bridge and out of sight. He’d forgotten to bring a hat--Mila would scold him for being careless again--and his unusual golden hair was starting to fall out of the braid he’d slept with it in.

Sure enough, when he returned to the loft Mila was waiting for him, hidden behind a wall of newspaper. Her hair was still half-pinned, and when he entered she she leapt from her seat at the small card table in excitement.

“Zhenya, have you heard?” She gestured to an article on the front page, sending tea slopping over the edge of her saucer. “There’s a rumor in St. Petersburg that Prince Yuri escaped the fires.”

Evgeni scowled at her and stole the toast from her plate. “Fucking outstanding. Now Georgi can finally chain me in the basement, and everyone can stop fussing over me like a brood of hens.”

“Who are you calling a hen, baby chick,” she pinched his cheek. “I know you think caution belongs to old men, but the two of you look so much alike. What would we do if the police came and collected our second-best dancer?”

“First of all: fuck you, second best?” Evgeni said, with great dignity. “Secondly: It’s been seven years. The prince was thirteen at the time of the riots. I know it was a while ago, but you must have been thirteen once. Would anyone recognize _you_ now?”

“My family isn’t the one offering a reward for information on my whereabouts.” Mila said, pointing back to the article. “Apparently Grandpa Plisetsky made it out West. God, that has to be a misprint, have you ever seen a bill with that many zeroes?”

She jammed the paper in his face, so close Evgeni’s eyes crossed trying to read the newsprint. The was of course how Victor found them minutes later, as he swept in looking every inch the picture of Western decadence in his silk robes embroidered with bright tropical birds.

Now there, Evgeni thought, was truth in advertising.

“Zhenya, I just had the most delightful chat with Mrs. Kuznetsov,” Victor said, and Evgeni swore his eyes danced with the flames of hell. “She could’ve sworn she saw the ghost of Prince Yuri dancing on the pond last night.”

“That old goat couldn’t see shit, even if she stepped in it.” Mila snickered.

Victor wrinkled his nose at the pair of them. “Delightful. That sounds like the kind of expertise that lands you the role of ‘horse’s ass.’”

“Fuck no, that was Georgi’s punishment. I’m already the wolf! ”

“You contain multitudes,” Victor said, with an exquisite lack of sympathy. “Also, luckily for you Georgi rolled his ankle last night.”

He looked at Mila, who smirked behind the rim of her teacup. “Remember your hat next time, your highness.”

 

* * *

 

“Lock up when you’re done,” Victor said, after.

“You promised to choreograph my Koschei after this run,” Evgeni shouted after him. “My first leading role. Don’t you fucking dare try and wiggle out of that too!”

“Of course I remember, Zhenya,” Victor said, clearly remembering none of this and hopping over a row of seats in a bid for escape. “How could I forget! Your first leading role! You will be a man soon, which means you and I will need to have a talk about birds and bees.”

Evgeni made a sound of pure rage. Loving Victor and wanting to toss him in the lake were often  confused for the same emotion, Georgi had said on more than one occasion.

“When a man loves a woman very much,” Victor trilled and ducked through the side exit laughing before Evgeni could throw the prop knives he was holding.

He returned the rest of the props, covered the sets with a sheet, and brushed down his wolf costume. When the theatre was restored to order--or, as much order as a place run by Victor could ever be--he sat on the edge of the deserted stage and looked out at the empty theatre barefoot, mask gone, his bright blond hair falling nearly to his shoulders.

Mila’s worries were real enough; it was prudent not to court additional trouble with the police. Victor was already too flamboyant by a half, and Georgi no better. The theatre’s popularity provided a measure of safety with the authorities, and there was no reason to jeopardize that by shouting from the rooftops Evgeni’s resemblance to dethroned monarchs.

Still, the air felt thick with ghosts: the ghost of Prince Yuri, rumored dead in the coup of seven years ago, the ghosts of Evgeni’s family, who he could only grasp at in dreams. There were images--fire, a narrow room, a small square of light, and the warmth of a hand over his--but they were fleeting things.

Victor had found him in the aftermath of the riots, collapsed in the square and bleeding. The actors adopted him without a second thought; they were kind, and Evgeni replayed them by being the best dancer in St. Petersburg without a face.

 

* * *

 

Evgeni had, in his long and illustrious career at the theatre, played all manner of monsters and ghosts and veiled brides, but the important thing is always this: he danced. His feet blistered and the costume stuck to him with sweat from the heat of the stage lights, but Evgeni danced.

It was almost like skating, and everything like being free.

 

* * *

 

After the final curtain--two encores for Mila, and one for Evgeni, he kept score--Evgeni lingered in the costume room after the show, away from the patrons who jostled and pinched and stared, in a way that left Evgeni feeling like a zoo animal. Georgi hobbled over to congratulate him, his ankle still bandaged. Madame Baranovskaya stopped by just to slip him a small bag of piroshki and tell him the landing of his _jeté entrelacé_ was sloppy. Mila, already happily drunk, brought a pack of cards and they passed a happy hour playing Reunion nestled between a rack of soldiers uniforms and Herr Drosselmeyer’s gaudy cape.

When the door opened again Evgeni was already half-expecting Victor, if only because Mila had found the crown of blue roses he’d worn as Sleeping Beauty and insisted Evgeni wear them too. Except, the Victor who entered was not the breathless, shining Victor from curtain call. Nor was he the exasperated, sharp-tongued actor Evgeni saw more often. There was a real fear to him now that chilled Evgeni to the bone, and he carried a bulging knapsack in one hand, Mila’s coat in the other.

“Zhenya, I know this is asking for a miracle, but I need you to listen to me, and do exactly as I say.” Evgeni watched as Victor tore through a rack of dresses, searching frantically for something. He emerged from the forest of petticoats with a dress labelled Peasant Girl Three, and the winter cloak he’d worn not two hours ago as Ivan, Hero of the Land.

Mila frowned at the cloak as if it had personally offended her. “What--”

“--Mrs. Kuznetsov had a little talk with the police about her ghost problem,” Victor said. There was little for Evgeni to say after that. He slipped on the dress, and allowed Victor to fasten the cloak at his throat.

 

* * *

 

In the thick darkness of the compartment, Victor turned to him and said, “do you remember why we called you Evgeni?”

The belly of the train scraped over the late-night snowfall not yet swept from the tracks, and Evgeni could see thin clouds of his breath every time he exhaled. They had rushed to the train station, and counted on the weather and the number of people on the platform to hide them. Evgeni had barely managed to keep from tears when Victor had climbed into the compartment beside him. There were worse fates than fleeing town, but Evgeni was humbly, pathetically grateful that they had not left him to disappear alone. Beside him Mila shivered with cold, but kept silent. There hadn’t been time to go back for blankets.

“Because you needed a name to put on your handbill?” He guessed, leaning into Mila’s warmth.

“Because you looked like you belonged on a coin,” Victor corrected. “Like nobility.”

“You named me for a pun?” Evgeni growled.

“It stopped being funny when it started being true,” Mila said.

“You can’t know that. _I_ don’t even know that.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue. It didn’t matter though; the authorities thought it was true, that would be enough.

“The real question is if Grandpa Plisetsky would know,” Victor said. There was a calculating note to his voice that set Evgeni on edge. “Is he still offering a reward?”

“Yes.” Evgeni could hear the smile in Mila’s voice, this was _bad_. “But he’s had many Yuris come forward already. This one would have to be exceptional.”

“Fuck you. I’m a delight,” Evgeni flicked her. “I’m not taking princess lessons from Victor to defraud an old man.”

“It would be the role of a lifetime,” Victor said in what Evgeni had come to think of as his salesman voice. “Much better than Koschei.”

Evgeni thought of the prince’s grandfather, the only known survivor of the coup, placing all his hopes on the whisper of a rumor that he was not alone. That some small piece of his family lived. He thought about Victor, leaving the theatre that was his whole life, and Mila, who had no family beyond the theatre anyhow. 

“It's wrong,” Evgeni said.

Victor shrugged. “Is it? Nikolai Plisetsky wants a family. You need his protection. Mila and I need to lie low. It seems like a scheme that would solve everyone's problems neatly.”

Evgeni rolled his eyes. “And the money doesn't factor into it at all? Don't pretend you're just doing this out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Actors have patrons,” Victor said, and avoided Evgeni’s eyes. “Think of it as receiving compensation for your performance.”

What was worse: deceiving an old man into thinking he had family, or disappointing the only family Evgeni could remember having?

He toyed with the Saint Mark’s medal, digging stiff fingers into the point of the lion’s wings. The words engraved on the back he knew by heart: Paris, France.

In the end it was hardly a choice at all.

 

* * *

 

As Victor was a conman of the highest order, Evgeni was completely unsurprised to awake and find a small pile of blankets and a box of crackers laid in offering at his feet.

“I was careful,” Victor said, waving away their twin faces of concern. “Don’t worry, no one knows we’re here. These people have so many bags, they won’t notice a few missing.”

“Is that so?” A slow smile spread across Mila’s face.

After that it became something of a game; Mila stole a lady’s suitcase off a platform outside Vyritsa and spent the evening wearing her mink and pearls. Victor, refusing to be outdone, snatched a gentleman’s suitcase from the luggage car and returned to them freshly shaved and sporting a gorgeous herringbone-patterned suit.

“Don’t be jealous, Zhenya,” Mila held up an ugly peach-colored dress with unflattering ruffles bursting overzealously from the hemline.  “We brought you something too!”

Evgeni declined to take the dress--peach was not a color that flattered his skin tone. But he did help himself to one of the many dress shirts from Victor’s stockpile, and a pair of trousers that didn’t have a tear in the knee.

Evgeni added a brilliant red waistcoat--Victor’s taste in fashion was too sedate, honestly--replete with embroidered tigers, and set out for the dining car.

He made it less than twenty paces before the guard stopped him.

Had Evgeni ever previously given thought to the idea of fleeing police while on board a moving train, he would have dismissed it as a stupid idea. Evgeni hadn’t seen much of the train when he boarded. The corridor was narrow, and he stumbled in the dark, grasping at the handles of the sleeper compartments and trying in vain to find one unlocked.

 It was only when he found a door that was open and threw himself inside that he remembered there would likely be occupants. 

Evgeni’s first impression of the man was one of sharpness. Everything, from the cut of his suit, to the line of his jaw, was exacting, his hand across Evgeni’s throat before Evgeni could make a sound.

“Wait--” Evgeni struggled for air in fits and starts. “I wasn’t--”

“Wasn’t what?” The man slammed Evgeni against the wall, hand tightening around his throat. As he moved, the pins holding Evgeni’s hair under his hat came loose, a curtain of gold falling across his vision.

The man let go of Evgeni as if he’d been burned. In the half-light of the compartment he looked almost sickly, as if Evgeni were a ghost he’d unearthed by accident.

Boots sounded on the other side of the door, followed by the pounding of a fist. Before Evgeni could object, the man pushed him behind the door and into the shadows. 

"What." It was not a question in the man's mouth, but a vicious sliver of a word. The guards, blocked from Evgeni's view by the broad expanse of the man's back, tripped over themselves in the face of his coldness. 

“My apologies for the disturbance, sir. We’re looking for a stowaway--”

“I haven’t seen anything,” the man said, flat and unforgiving. He slammed the door in the unlucky officer’s face, and Evgeni nearly laughed aloud.

The man turned, and stepped into the light. Evgeni flushed as he realized that 1) he was only a handful of years older than Evgeni himself, and 2) once the coldness of his expression thawed, he was distressingly handsome. It was the eyes--dark, and deep enough for a man to drown in--that made him seem older.

“You lied for me,” Evgeni accused. The man left him off-balance. 

“You remind me of someone.” There was a soft burr of an accent in his voice Evgeni had missed earlier. It did nothing to dampen the confusing swirl of anger and attraction that warred in the pit of Evgeni's stomach. "What is your name?" 

Evgeni thought back to Victor's mad proposal the first night on the train. He lifted his chin and glared at the man, and in his best approximation of Victor's stage voice said, "Yuri Nikolayevich Pilsetsky, Prince of Russia." 

The man smiled. It was not a pleasant sort of smile, but the grim satisfaction of a wolf who had trapped a rabbit.

"No." The man's voice was dangerously soft. "I don't think you are. Try again." 

Evgeni flushed. "You dare talk to your prince that way?"

"You are forgetting," the man stepped closer, "that he is no longer the prince of anything, no matter what we might wish."

A young man who wore his effortless authority like a coat. A private car, resplendent in heavy, dark wood. The rich carpets, the slick pomade of his hair--Evgeni had missed something important. Something vital. 

"How do you expect to convince those of us who knew him?" The man said, and each word out of his mouth was like ice.

"Oh fuck," Evgeni said, in dawning horror. 

The man's eyes flashed. "Seven years is not a long time, there are many who were there. We remember."

"You knew." Evgeni was backed against the wall. The thump of boots outside suggested the police still patrolled the halls. There was nowhere for him to run. "You knew and you lied for me anyway? Why the fuck would you do that?"

“It’s what he would’ve wanted,” the man said. A hint of a smile lit his eyes. “Otabek Atlin.”

Evgeni blinked. It took a moment for him to register that this was, in fact, a name.

He offered a hand, careful to keep his movements slow and nonthreatening. “Evgeni.”

Otabek raised an eyebrow. "Just Evgeni?"

“That's all there is,” Evgeni said defensively.

“Just Evgeni, then,” Otabek said, disbelief wrapped in every syllable. “Where are you headed?”

Evgeni grinned.

 

* * *

 

“Gauche, gauche, _incredibly_ gauche,” Victor tossed the offending waistcoats aside. He held up what Evgeni thought was a particularly handsome one for inspection: a florid purple silk, with buttons like diamonds. “Fantastic.”

“Right?” Evgeni preened.

“--if you’re a brothel madam,” Victor finished, before tossing the waistcoat in the reject pile along with its brethren. “Zhenya you’ve got to work with me a little. You’re supposed to be a prince.” He shot Otabek a narrow look where he lounged on the fitting room couch with Mila, their heads bent together in quiet conversation.

Victor hadn’t taken well to Otabek’s inclusion in their scheme, and it had taken Evgeni and Mila’s combined powers of persuasion to make him see sense. Objectively, Mila argued, it could only help their case to have someone with a knowledge of the palace and the royal family whispering in their ear.

“I don’t trust him,” Victor had said, even as he relented. “And I won’t trust him until I know what he wants. It isn’t a cut of the reward--the man already has a shitload of money--so, what? Why is he helping us?”

And Evgeni, who knew, deep in the core of him, that Otabek was as honorable as they came, said only, “we can trust him. I know it.”

“The first time you met him, he was lying to the police,” Victor pointed out.

Evgeni was not so certain it was the first time they’d met. Something about Otabek, the dark, crisp lines of him, tugged at the edges of Evgeni’s memory.

“He lied for me. He got all three of us across the border,” Evgeni insisted. “If he wanted to get rid of me there were a thousand opportunities to turn me over to the fucking border guards.”

“I vote trust him,” Mila nodded. “Until he gives us a reason not to.”

Days later, in the private fitting room of a department store in Berlin, Otabek had yet to to even hint at a double-cross. Evgeni would have felt vindicated if he wasn’t busy dying a slow, sartorially incompetent death.

“Excuse you, I would make an amazing madam,” he said, snatching the waistcoat back from Victor’s clutches.

“Hear hear,” Mila toasted from the couch, raising the delicate flute of champagne one of the attendants had brought to ease the pain of being outfitted for an entirely new wardrobe.

“Besides, it’s fucking purple. Purple is a royal color.” 

Otabek, oddly, had no objections to Yuri dressing like a gentlemen of ill repute. His entire opinion on the subject was,“the prince had...eccentric tastes.”

Evgeni, through the liberal use of invective and sheer bullheadedness, managed to escape the encounter with the purple waistcoat, two utterly boring suits, and a rainbow of ties that appeared to give Victor physical pain to contemplate. Evgeni, remembering Victor’s cheerful attempts to dodge choreographing Evgeni’s pieces, smiled in satisfaction. Revenge was a dish best served with absurd tailoring. That, and he rather liked the waistcoat.

“What’s next then?” Evgeni asked back at the hotel. Mila, having sufficiently embarrassed Evgeni with insistence on his need for a chaperone, was curled up on the settee, already fast asleep.

Otabek looked up from his reading. He hadn’t seemed troubled by Mila’s implications that Evgeni would welcome Otabek ravishing his maiden virtue--her words, not Evgeni’s--but Evgeni still found it difficult to look at him without flushing.

“Forms of address and a rundown of relevant diplomats might be helpful,” Otabek said, considering. “Though that can wait for the train. Genealogy would be good. Dancing lessons, perhaps.” Here he made a face. “Though for that we’d have to wake Mila up.”

“You don’t dance?”

Otabek laughed, and Evgeni gripped the medal where it had slipped from his shirt so that he didn’t do something stupid like reach for the man.

“The prince himself asked me not to,” he said after a moment. “As a favor.”

“He sounds like a asshole.”

Otabek smiled. Something in Evgeni’s chest warmed to see it.

“What are you holding?” His eyes fixed on the medal still clutched in Evgeni’s hand.

Evgeni shrugged. “A saint’s medal. St. Mark.”

The wings of the lion glittered in the late afternoon sun.

“Now where did you find this,” Otabek said softly. He lifted the medal from Evgeni’s fingers, studying it with an intensity that drew Evgeni in like a magnet.

“It was on me when I was found.” They were so close now, noses almost brushing, and Evgeni had to make a concentrated effort not to fall into silence staring at the the golden gleam of Otabek’s eyes. “I think it’s mine.”

“You think it’s yours?”

“I don’t remember much,” Evgeni said. “Victor found me in the square. I was maybe fourteen--we’re not sure of that either--and everything before that is…” He trailed off. It wasn’t that he had no memories. It was that the scattered ones he had made no sense. A square of light, a pair of hands--nothing solid. The medal was the only tangible connection to his past. He kept it with him always.

He guided Otabek to the stamp on the back, word’s he’d memorized long ago.

“Paris,” Otabek said. The intensity in his face made it difficult to breathe.

“Paris,” Evgeni echoed. The city of lights. The city of love. The city that housed Nikolai Plisetsky.

 

* * *

 

 

Evgeni didn’t know how he was expected to sleep, what with the embassy visit scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and the specter of a royal lineage and all its attendant obligations hanging over his head.

In St. Petersburg, he would have skated the stress away. In Paris, he was at a loss.

Evgeni slipped out of the hotel room, careful not to wake Victor where he snored in the next bed. Even if he couldn’t skate, a walk and a view of the water would surely help.

To Evgeni’s surprise, Otabek was waiting for him in the lobby. “Mila said you’d try and sneak out on your own.”

“I don’t need a guard dog,” Evgeni curled his lip.

“She also said to mention that there’s a shop across from Musée de l'Orangerie that rents skates.” He quirked an eyebrow toward Evgeni. “But of course, you don’t need me to show you the way.”

Evgeni did not pout, which he thought was very big of him. Perhaps some of Victor’s lessons has stuck after all. Instead he allowed Otabek accompany him through the city, past the clubs and revelers, the Eiffel Tower twinkling over the city like a north star.

When they reached the skate shop, Otabek surprised him once more by ordering two pairs of skates. One for Evgeni, one for himself.

“Close your mouth, you’re catching flies,” Otabek said, a smile curling on the edges of his mouth. Evgeni snapped his jaw shut, but it was too late--he could feel the heat rising in his skin. Plenty of people knew how to skate. That Otabek was one of them shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Evgeni finished tying his skates and took off without him. He did a few quick circuits of the rink, testing the edge of his skates, falling back into a long-familiar rhythm of movement.  

“Not bad,” Otabek’s voice said from over his shoulder, and Evgeni wobbled only to find himself steadied by a pair of familiar hands. “You’ve got good speed.”

“Yeah?” Evgeni felt his whole body flush, damn his fair skin. Otabek’s hands were a miracle; that they weren’t always on Evgeni was a travesty. “Watch this.”

Evgeni pushed through to the middle of the rink. Otabek followed at his shoulder, effortlessly keeping stride. Crossovers proves easy for both of them, and Evgeni relished the scrape of skate blades echoed back at him, side-by-side, turning in sync as Evgeni led and Otabek followed.

Pushed to his limit, Evgeni sank into a viciously fast one-footed spin and was gratified to see Otabek watched a few paces away, orbiting him like a moon.

They’d acquired a crowd of onlookers by the time he'd finished. Scattered applause emerged from the edges of the rink.

“You have admirers,” Otabek said, offering his arm as they exited the ice. 

Evgeni smiled dizzily. “Do we have to go back?” He’d rather skate in front of a hundred strangers than present his case before Nikolai Plisetsky and be found wanting.

“Yes,” Otabek said, rueful. His eyes were fixed not on the crowd, but on Evgeni, drinking him in. There was a whole host of suggestions Evgeni would like to make, in the face of a look like that. Unfortunately, tonight was for other things. 

“Where did you learn to skate like that?” He asked instead. Certainly not at whatever soft diplomat’s office he belonged to. It was disconcerting to think that for all Otabek knew him, Evgeni knew very little about Otabek.

"A certain friend," Otabek said. His expression turned distant. "We were rivals of a sort. He was very competitive."

"At the palace," Evgeni connected the dots. "You were friends with the prince." Otabek had said before that he remembered the prince, but the palace was large. Evgeni hadn't expected them to be as close as Otabek's words suggested. 

"If the stories are to be believed, I am still friends with him now," Otabek said, and Evgeni remembered where they were, and what they were doing. 

"They are." He fumbled for the right words. "You are." 

Otabek smiled. It was a small smile, but it warmed Evgeni from the inside out. "Good."

They took the longest, most obscure route possible back to the hotel, arm in arm. And if Victor kicked up a fuss about curfew and chaperones, well. Evgeni was a prince now. He could handle it .

 

* * *

 

Nikolai Plisetsky didn’t look like Evgeni at first glance. His nose was wider, and the remaining hair he had was a bristly grey where Evgeni’s was thin and fine. It was something of a surprise when he looked up, and Evgeni noticed in his eyes a familiar shade of blue he was most used to seeing in the mirror.

Evgeni had brushed his hair over and over in the early hours of the morning in a failed attempt to calm his nerves. It hung straight in a golden curtain that fell to his collarbones. After a knock-down-drag-out fight with Victor over color theory, they’d settled on a cream-colored suit and a tie of ice-blue silk. Mila assured him he looked princely; to Evgeni, it just felt like another costume.

“Sit, please,” Nikolai said. “Mr.?”

"My friends named me Evgeni, when they found me." Evgeni darted a glance to Otabek, then away. “I don't know my birth name. I don’t remember. Sir." 

Otabek looked like he was holding back a laugh. 

“You don’t remember.” Nikolai shifted in his chair, resigned. “That’s...convenient.”  

Otabek put his hand to the small of Evgeni’s back. “Show him the medal.”

Nikolai’s eyes narrowed at the touch. “Atlin. I know you miss my grandson very much, and I must admit, this one bears a striking resemblance--”

This one. Of course there had been others. How many times had Otabek stood here, in the spot, and had this exact conversation?

“--it’s him,” Otabek smiled. “Look.”

Evgeni unclasped the medal with clumsy hands and held it out for inspection. The change on Nikolai’s face was instantaneous.

“Where did you get this?” His hands shook.

“It was on me when I was found, in the riots,” Evgeni said. “I'm not sure where it came from. All can I remember is the fire.”

“A common story, sadly.” Nikolai turned the still-warm medal over in his hands, and Evgeni resisted the urge to snatch it back from him. “A piece of Queen Alexandra’s jewelry, now that is less common, but still obtainable if you know the right person to ask.”

Here he glanced again at Otabek.

“He didn’t give it to me!” Evgeni shouted. In plays, everyone talked about anger as a red mist. Evgeni’s anger brought everything into sharp relief, like focusing through a lens. Through all Victor’s coaching, the lessons, the clothes, Otabek had remained frustrating close-mouthed. Otabek had never tried to change Evgeni at all. The only thing he’d brought to Evgeni was a faith so ironclad and unassailable that Evgeni had started to believe him, too.

“He didn’t tell me _jack shit_ , not even when I fucking begged him. So if you’re going to imply that he’s a thief, I‘m certainly not going to stand here and listen.”

There. He’s blown their chances right out of the fucking water. Victor would be furious. Evgeni felt as if a weight had been lifted from his chest.

“Well.” Nikolai laughed. He laughed and laughed, and Evgeni watched him and wondered if the whole thing was some sort of elaborate prank.

“I don’t believe I’ve heard anyone swear with quite your conviction since my brat of a grandson attempted to ride Count Yakov’s mastiff,” Nikolai said, wiping his eyes. “Truly, you don’t remember anything else? Nothing at all?”

In that moment, he looked so desperate to believe Evgeni's story that Evgeni ached. He closed his eyes and tried to recall anything, any small detail that could help. And after a moment, a new image came. 

“There was a boy.”

At the back of Evgeni’s jacket he felt Otabek’s hand clench tight in the fabric of his coat. They had not discussed this, but Evgeni had the uncanny feeling that if he laid out the puzzle pieces of his memory before Nikolai, Nikolai might know what to do with them.

“I don’t know where we were, but it was dark. Narrow.” Evgeni swallowed, and tried to navigate the slippery memory. “The boy was there. He took my hand, and pulled me with him. There was someone following us?” That was new. But the memory of choking fear, of footsteps close behind him, that followed on the heels of the first memory as easy as turning the page of a book. “No,” Evgeni said, more certain now, “they were chasing us. He took my hand, and he to brought me through...a passage I think."

"The dumbwaiter," Otabek corrected, his voice raw. Evgeni kept his eyes closed, afraid he would lose the trail of the memory unfolding before him if didn't, but reached out until his fingers met Otabek's.

"We hid in the dumbwaiter, but we were too heavy to both go down. And one of us had to work the pulley." Evgeni could see it now, the square of light rising higher and higher out of reach. "I tried to argue. He said..”

Nikolai leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “What did he say?”

“He told me to run, and that he’d catch up with me when he could.” Evgeni looked to where Otabek stood, rigid and blank-faced, then down at his hand, which clutched Evgeni's in a white-knuckled grip. “He promised me.”

Evgeni turned to face Nikolai, his grandfather. He was still smiling, but now there were tears in the corners of his eyes. 

“Ah, Yuratchka,” Nikolai stood, and lumbered forward. They regarded each other a moment, before Nikolai reeled him in for a crushing embrace. "Welcome home. It would seem we have many things to discuss." 

 

* * *

 

It was late evening before he left the embassy. There had been much to talk about; arrangements for Victor and Mila, a ball to celebrate his return, the story of Nikolai’s own escape. Otabek had vanished around the time Nikolai started crying in ernest, which Evgeni was grateful for as it meant he missed Evgeni’s inevitable snotty tears.

Evgeni caught up to him in the restaurant below the hotel, waiting with two cups of coffee. His face looked as worn as Evgeni felt. 

“Victor’s discovered jazz bars,” he said as Evgeni approached, and slid one of the coffees towards him. “There will be no living with him after this.”

Evgeni ignored the invitation to sit and planted himself on the corner of the table in front of Otabek, leaning into Otabek’s space.

“You saved my life.”

“Yes,” Otabek said, as if it were just that simple. Maybe it was, for him.  

“You got me out of the palace. You spent _years_  searching for me.” Evgeni remembered their first meeting, the way Otabek had looked at him as if seeing a ghost. 

“Yes.”

“I’m going to kiss you, right here, in front of the entire restaurant,” Evgeni warned.

“Yes,” Otabek said. He glanced up at Evgeni--at Yuri, he was going to have to get used to that--and the depth of feeling in his eyes made Yuri glad he was sitting down.

He cradled Otabek’s face in both hands. Being around Nikolai made it easier to remember, but there were still so many things lost. Yuri had known a smaller, softer version of Otabek once, and he would enjoy remembering him again. For now Yuri satisfied himself with tracing the fine lines forming at the corners of Otabek's eyes, and in his imagination watched them grow and deepen, Otabek’s dark hair turning a sleek silver. He would look forward to that, too.

“Am I going to have to wait another seven years?” Otabek said, an edge of humor to his voice, and Yuri kissed him, open-mouthed and shameless. There was an audible gasp from the neighboring table. Yuri made a rude gesture and kissed Otabek again, this time with more tongue.

“ _Y_ _uri_ ,” Otabek said, when he finally broke for air. 

Yuri shrugged. “You know, Nikolai wanted to have a ball. Announce me to the world.” He ran his fingers through Otabek’s hair, destroying his carefully curated pomade. “I told him no.”

“You’re doing a decent job of announcing yourself.” Otabek conceded, sliding a hand around his waist.

“I told him I wanted a skating exhibition. He agreed.” Yuri leaned forward, close enough that their noses brushed. “I want you on the ice with me.”

“Of course, your highness.” Otabek sounded amused. “Do I get to pick the music?”

“I suppose you’ve earned it,” Yuri said, and kissed him once more, for luck.

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @otayuri-queen on tumblr for being the most wonderful partner to work with, and for providing the gorgeous art!!!  
> And ofc many thanks to nebs, for agreeing to look over this for me! You're a star!


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